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I'm sorry, but I must disagree. The music in the original had much more suspense and kept you on the edge of your seat. They should've based the new game music around the original score. It's like Firaxis wanted to distance themselves from a game close to our hearts and forge a franchise of their own making, whilst trading of the original games reputation. Poor show IMO.

You know what, everyone? I really like the alien redesigns in the new XCOM.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your enjoyment and edification, I am proud to present Moot Point, who will correct my previous statement. You might recognise Moot from such forum posts as Gwilym Doesn't Actually Like The New XCOM Music, The Jake Who Stole Everything and Oh God So Many Bodies. Ladies and gentlemen: Moot Point.

You know what, everyone? I really like the alien redesigns in the new XCOM.

And now, ladies and gentlemen, for your enjoyment and edification, I am proud to present Moot Point, who will correct my previous statement. You might recognise Moot from such forum posts as Gwilym Doesn't Actually Like The New XCOM Music, The Jake Who Stole Everything and Oh God So Many Bodies. Ladies and gentlemen: Moot Point.

*applause; X-COM interception theme*

I will point out a part of my earlier post,

Originally Posted by Moot Point

I suppose there is Xenonauts to look forward too, but one thing i liked about the new game was the graphical style. Shame it wasn't the game I envisaged.

Maybe you should take the time to read what people have typed to save yourself from further embarrassment.

Anyone tried Slingshot? I bought it but don't feel like replaying the game again just a month after 100-hours Classic Ironman binge( just to finish ONE campaign). By the way, some people here say game is easy on Classic Ironman? How come? It's often very random and squad instadeath( aka gameover) is always around the corner, no matter how good you are. It just can't be easy, statistically. Probably I just suck at the game, though.

Looking back now, what really feels like a missing opportunity is not even no Base Defence mission, but a shortage of multi-level maps. Sure there are some maps with buildings, but there is sadly almost nothing like a big wharehouse from tutorial or those barns from UFO/X-Com.

Legitimate criticisms of XCOM, like behaviour of the strategic AI or map variety are one thing. But calling Jake Solomon a joke whou should never make a game again is a clear symptom of having PEANUTS FOR BRAINS.

Why? I'm not making niggling criticisms here: I think the game is, top-down, fundamentally broken, and misunderstands what made XCOM great. The problem is compounded by Jake's insistence in the weeks leading up the game's release that he did, in fact, get why the original was so popular.

He made numerous high-level design mistakes that completely kill the entire 4-year project. Things like a repetitive, linear strategic layer that rewards only one style of play, and things like confined tactical gameplay that actually manages to punish inventive player maneuvers with its "alien activation" mechanic. I honestly still cannot believe how bad the game is on every level.

Jake Solomon should not lead a game's design again -- or if he does, it shouldn't be a project of anywhere near this profile. Like Jon Shafer, he's a nice Firaxian who got way in over his head. He needs to go.

Edit: There's actually a video of Solomon with the dev team at PAX talking about all of Jake's prototypes and concepts for the game, and how they were all atrocious and took up years (yes, years) of development time before the team scrapped them entirely. Obviously, Firaxis intended the video to be a window into the normal development process, and wanted to signal players that the game had recovered.

But it never did. The release version settled on mechanics just as dumb as the ones on display at PAX. I wonder how much better the game would have been with a lead who didn't have to constantly reinvent the whole project because of how dumb his decisions were.

Why? I'm not making niggling criticisms here: I think the game is, top-down, fundamentally broken, and misunderstands what made XCOM great.

The problem with that point of view is the masses of evidence to the contrary. I've not even played it, but the balance of probabilities would be that you were broken, rather than the game, given the positive response from a wide spread of sources.

What sources? If you're talking about the vast majority of game reviewers, it doesn't exactly take much to impress them. I also didn't like Civ 5 -- a game that received 90+ on Metacritic but that was fundamentally broken in a variety of ways. Really, vanilla Civ 5 was horrible, and only one reviewer (I think Tom Chick) pointed this out at launch. The rest simply said "OMG so deep so pretty 5/5."

Note that many reviewers only play games for a week, tops, before coming out with a review. I loved XCOM for the first two weeks, before I realized how poor the game was and how little replayability there is. It's a game that promises to be a rewarding strategic sandbox that turns out to be a linear, repetitive and mostly random slogfest.

It's also kind of silly to discredit my argument simply by saying other people appear to disagree with it. Is this a discussion board or not?

I don't think anyone, hardcore or not, has any reason to think XCOM is a good game. It's shiny at first, but once you understand the mechanics, it becomes repetitive and completely gamey. No strategy or tactics at all.

I don't think anyone, hardcore or not, has any reason to think XCOM is a good game. It's shiny at first, but once you understand the mechanics, it becomes repetitive and completely gamey. No strategy or tactics at all.

Is this another one of those BS "everybody who enjoyed this must be an utter idiot" posts? We can pretty much do without them around here.

- If the sound of Samuel Barber's "Adagio For Strings" makes you think of Kharak burning instead of the Vietnamese jungle, most of your youth happened during the 90s. -

I don't think anyone, hardcore or not, has any reason to think XCOM is a good game.

Well I thought it was good despite it flaws. I wanted a game with the same feeling of tension I felt in 1994 when I first played UFO Defence and it managed to convey it very well. I do agree with most of your posts though, XCOM is linear and strategic layer is very shallow. Tactical combat was enjoyable for me though.

Originally Posted by georgetownhoya

No strategy or tactics at all.

Remind me again, what kind of tactics there were in the original? I vaguely remember spamming the map with grenades and then getting shot or mindcontrolled from fog of war. And I replayed the game just couple of years ago, probably for a twelfth time. Equipment and inventory management were a big thing, sure, and combining different weaponry made sense because some aliens had resistance to some damage, yes. But anyway I completed it with "Heavy plasmas for everyone" type of squad and some rocket HWP's.

Originally Posted by georgetownhoya

gamey

I don't really know what you mean exactly. Some rules in XCOM are extemely arbitrary and yes, sometimes it feels like a "bucket of dice" situation from some tabletop game but I'm not sure if its bad.

I think by "gamey" he means running through the motions without any thought needed. Which in all fairness, XCOM turns into. The tactical layer of the game is non-existent after the satellites are up, so many of us who wanted a tactical turned based strategy game haven't got. I agree that Jake should be shot for this travesty of a game. However, the only bright light is xenonauts (which I hope comes out sooner rather than later)